Monday, July 23, 2018

17th Century Science Ciphers

Did you know? It was common in the 17th Century for scientists to publish cipher-versions of early findings, so as to establish priority in the discovery. (Something of an early, public-encrypted arXiv, as it were.) Huygens wrote in 1668:

a way of securing his discoveries and inventions for the future by way
of cypher or anagram, to be lodged in the Register-book of the society,
till he should think it convenient to explain them in a common language;
making withal a beginning of this way of communicating new discoveries
by sending the following cypher; which was ordered to be entered into
the Register-book.